of wooded islets, and its setting of rugged mountains, some of which
are covered with snow during the greater part of the year, render it
one of the most beautiful lakes in Europe.
SCUTTLE, a term formerly applied to a broad flat dish or platter; it represents the O. Eng. scutel, cognate with Ger. Schüssel, dish, derived from Lat. scutella, a square salver or tray, dim. of scutra, a platter, probably allied to scutum, the large oblong shield, as distinguished from the clypeus, the small round shield. The name survives in the coal-scuttle, styled “purdonium” in English auctioneers' catalogues, which now assumes various forms. “Scuttle” in this sense must be distinguished from the word meaning a small opening in the deck or side of a ship, either forming a hatchway or cut through the covering of the hatchway; from which to “scuttle” a ship means to cut a hole in the bottom so that she sinks. This word is an adaptation of O. Fr. escoutille, mod. écoutille, from Span. escotilla, dim. of escoti, a sloping cut in a garment about the neck. The Spanish word is cognate with Du. school, Ger. Schoss, lap, bosom, properly the flap or projecting edge of a garment about the neck, O. Eng. sceat, whence “ sheet.” The colloquial “scuttle,” in the sense of hurrying away, is another form of “scuddle,” frequentative of “scud,” to run, which, like its variant “scoot,” is another form of “shoot.”
SCYLAX OF CARYANDA (in Caria), Greek historian, lived in the time of Darius Hystaspis (521–485 B.C.), who commissioned him to explore the course of the Indus. He started from Caspatyrus (Caspapyrus in Hecataeus; the site cannot be identified: see V. A. Smith, Early Hist. of India, 2nd ed., 1908, 34 note), and is said by Herodotus (iv. 44) to have reached the sea, whence he sailed west through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. Scylax wrote an account of his explorations, referred to by Aristotle (Politics, vii. 14), and probably also a history of the Carian hero Heracleides[1] prince of Mylasae, who distinguished himself in the revolt against Darius (Herodotus v. 121). This work is the earliest known Greek history which centred round the achievements of a single individual. Suïdas (s.v.), who mentions the second work, confounds the older Scylax with a much later author, who wrote a refutation of the history of Polybius, and is presumably identical with Scylax of Halicarnassus, a statesman and astrologer, the friend of Panaetius spoken of by Cicero (De div. ii. 42). Neither of these, however, can be the author of the Periplus of the Mediterranean, which has come down to us under the name of Scylax of Caryanda. This work is little more than a sailor's handbook of places and distances all round the coast of the Mediterranean and its branches, and then along the outer Libyan coast as far as the Carthaginians traded. Internal evidence shows that it must have been written long after the time of Herodotus, about 350 B.C.
Editions by B. Fabricius (1878) and C. Müller in Geographici Graeci minores, i., where the subject is fully discussed; see also G. F. Unger, Philologus, xxxiii. (1874); B. G. Niebuhr, Kleine Schriften, i. (1828); and E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, i.
SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. In Homer (Od. xii. 73, 235, 430) Scylla is a dreadful sea-monster, daughter of Crataeis, with six heads, twelve feet and a voice like the yelp of a puppy. She dwelt in a sea-cave looking to the west, far up the face of a huge cliff. Out of her cave she stuck her heads, fishing for marine creatures and snatching the seamen out of passing ships. Within a bowshot of this cliff was another lower cliff with a great fig-tree growing on it. Under this second rock dwelt Charybdis, who thrice a day sucked in and thrice spouted out the sea water. Between these rocks Odysseus sailed, and Scylla snatched six men out of his ship. In later classical times Scylla and Charybdis, whose position is not defined by Homer, were localized in the Straits of Messina—Scylla on the Italian, Charybdis on the Sicilian side (Strabo i. p. 24; vi. p. 268). The well-known line, Incidis in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim, occurs in the Alexandreis of Gautier de Lille, a poet of the 12th century. In Ovid (Metam. xiv. 1–74) Scylla appears as a beautiful maiden beloved by the sea-god Glaucus and other deities, and changed by the jealous Circe (or other rival) into a sea-monster; afterwards she was transformed into a rock shunned by fishermen. According to a late legend (Servius on Aeneid, iii. 420), Charybdis was a voracious woman who robbed Heracles of his cattle and was therefore cast into the sea by Zeus, where she retained her old voracious nature. In later poetry and art Scylla was conceived of as a maiden above, with dogs' or wolves' heads growing out of her body, and the tail of a fish.
Another Scylla, confounded by Virgil (Ecl. vi. 74) with the sea-monster, was a daughter of Nisus (q.v.), king of Megara.
See O. Waser, Skylla und Charybdis in der Literatur und Kunst der Griechen und Römer (1894); and D. Jobst, Skylla und Charybdis (Würzburg, 1902), who endeavours to show that the Homeric description really referred, as the ancients assumed, to the Sicilian straits.
SCYMNUS of Chios, the name assigned to a Greek geographer of uncertain date, commonly taken to be the author of a fragmentary anonymous Paraphrasis in verse describing the northern coasts of the Mediterranean and the shores of the Black Sea, a work which in the first edition (Augsburg, 1600) was ascribed to Marcianus of Heraclea. Meineke showed that this piece cannot be by Scymnus. It is dedicated to a King Nicomedes, probably Nicomedes III. of Bithynia (91–76 B.C.), and so would date from the beginning of the 1st century B.C. Its most valuable portions relate to the Euxine regions and to the Hellenic colonies of those shores as well as of the coasts of Spain, Gaul and Italy.
See Meineke's edition (Berlin, 1846); C. Müller, Geographi Graeci minores, vol. i., where the poem is edited with sufficient prolegomena, (pp. lxxiv.–lxxvii.); E. H. Bunbury, Ancient Geography, i. 99, 100, 102, 128, 183; ii. 26, 69–74.
SCYPHOMEDUSAE or Acalephae, one of the two subdivisions of the Hydrozoa (q.v.), the other being the Hydromedusae (q.v.). The subclass Scyphomedusae contains a number of animals which in the adult condition are medusae or jellyfishes (see Medusa), exclusively marine in habitat and found in all seas. They are chiefly pelagic organisms, floating at or near the surface of the water, but occur also at great depths, and are sometimes fixed and sessile in habit. Many species attain a large size and by their brilliant coloration are very conspicuous objects to the mariner or traveller. In spite of the soft nature of their bodies, a number of Scyphomedusae have been found fossil; see especially Maas (7 and 12).
A scyphomedusa is distinguished from a hydromedusa chiefly by the following points. The umbrella has a lobed, indented margin, a character only seen amongst Hydromedusae in the order Narcomedusae, and it is without the characteristic velum of the Hydromedusae; hence the Scyphomedusae are sometimes termed Hydrozoa Acraspeda. The sense-organs are covered over by flaps of the umbrella margin (hence “Steganophthalmata”), and are always tentaculocysts, that is to say, reduced and modified tentacles, which bear usually both ocelli and otocysts, and are hollow. The gonads are formed in the endoderm (hence “Entocarpeae”), and the generative products are shed into the gastric cavity and pass to the exterior by way of the mouth. The development from the egg may be direct, or may take place with an alternation of generations (metagenesis), in which a non-sexual individual, the so-called scyphistoma or scyphopolyp, produces by budding the sexual medusae.
Morphology of the Scyphomedusa.—As already stated, a medusa of this order may be free-swimming or sessile in habit. Intermediate between these two types are species which have the power of temporal fixation by the exumbral surface. Such forms when undisturbed fix themselves to the bottom and rest with their mouths and tentacles uppermost. If disturbed they swim about like other medusae until a favourable opportunity presents itself for resuming the sedentary habit. A well-known example of a permanently sessile form is Lucernaria, common on the Atlantic coasts of Europe, especially in Zostera-beds, attached to the weed. It resembles in general appearance a polyp, lacking even the characteristic medusan sense-organs, which are present,
- ↑ This Heracleides is noticed in an Egyptian papyrus containing a fragment of the historian Sosylus, which alludes, by way of comparison, to the tactical ability displayed by him at the battle of Artemisium (Wilcken in Hermes, xli., 1906, pp. 103 seq.).
